Monday's most followed, including Andy Murray, Seedrs, Vodafone, Armadale Capital, Minera and Atlant

Tennis star Andy Murray was hitting the net of a different kind on Monday as news emerged that he had teamed up with a leading crowdfunding platform. For the unitiated, and there are probably many as this is quite new, equity crowdfunding is a new way of funding new business start-ups via garnering cash from the web. Murray, a Wimbledon winner, has teamed up with Seedrs, the online platform, saying "I've always been interested in investment, and being able to get involved in an innovative way to help support British start-ups really appealed to me. "Equally as important was working with people I trusted and who fully understood the huge responsibility of handling people's money." Jeff Lynn, chief executive and co-founder of Seedrs, said the champion represented the "exact combination of qualities that entrepreneurs need to be successful: determination, focus, integrity and skill". Also garnering interest in webworld as Footsie and global indices turned red, were stories about bid chatter at phone giant Vodafone (LON:VOD) and drinks giant Diageo (LON:DGE), the latter seeing its shares surge around 7% in early deals. The Diageo speculation started on Friday evening in the US, when Jorge Paulo Lemann, who is behind 3G Capital and has a stake in Anheuser-Busch InBev, was said to be interested by the Brazilian press. Vodafone (LON:VOD) also gained as talk of a tie-up with cable giant Liberty Global refused to die down. Reports over the weekend suggested Liberty’s owner is pushing for a full blown merger and not an asset swap. Heavyweight investment bank Deutsche was also in the news as it emerged John Cyan will replace Anshu Jain at the end of the month and become soul chief executive when Jurgen Fitschen steps down next year. A standout gainer in small cap world was Armadale Capital (LON:ACP), which at one point, rocketed over 200% after it has struck what it called a "landmark" agreement to fund and develop its Mpokoto project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into production, which is earmarked for the first half of 2016. The heads of terms is with Africa Mining Contracting Services group (A-MCS), who will fund, construct and operate the project in the Katanga province and initial ground works are to kick off immediately. Elsewhere, Mineral IRL (LON:MIRL) soared 27.5% to 6.375p as it took several giant steps towards financing its Ollachea gold project in Southern Peru. The group has secured a US$70mln bridge facility backed by the Peruvian state-owned development bank, Corporacion Financiera de Desarrollo, or COFIDE for short and is in talks with COFIDE and bankers to agree a US$240mln senior debt facility. On the flip side, anthracite miner Atlantic Coal (LON:ATC) lost 20% despite being is confident about seeing demand for its products continuing and posting record production of coal in 2014. However, the loss for last year widened compared to 2014, mainly due to lower sales volumes and low prices towards the end of the year, the miner said, while the worst winter for 20 years in Pennsylvania, USA curtailed output in the first quarter last year. Sound Oil (LON:SOU) also eased 13.13% to 17.38p as it updated on the latest Nervesa appraisal well in Italy.